Please login or click here to join.
Forgot Password? Click Here to reset pasword
 |  |  |  |  |  |
Patrick Van Calck Posts: 297 Joined: 28th Jun 2007 Location: Belgium | quotePosted at 07:47 on 29th June 2010 I read a lot about England and I 've just been reading about this chap Brutus. I never heard about him. Is it common knowledge in England? Do you learn about it at school? |
Rob Faleer Posts: 703 Joined: 10th Jun 2005 Location: USA | quotePosted at 14:24 on 29th June 2010 Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1100-c.1150) called Brutus the first king of Britain. Brutus was reputedly the grandson of Aeneas, a Trojan prince who, with his family, escaped the Greek sack of Troy. Virgil's epic The Aeneid relates the tale of Aeneas, whom the Romans viewed as the traditional founder of Rome. Does Geoffrey of Monmouth's claim that a Trojan was the first in the line of early British kings hold any water? Probably not, though most myths have at least some grain of truth to them. Remember that the city of Troy was thought to be completely mythical until the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered and excavated the city in the 19th century, proving once and for all that Troy had been a real and powerful city-state and that there was much truth to Homer's Iliad. |
| Patrick Van Calck Posts: 297 Joined: 28th Jun 2007 Location: Belgium | quotePosted at 07:09 on 30th June 2010 aha and you learn this at school? |
cathyml Posts: 23275 Joined: 25th Jan 2010 Location: South Africa | quotePosted at 08:21 on 30th June 2010 Either my memory is faulty (quite possible) or I didn't listen in class, (more likely), lol, but I do not remember hearing anything about a Brutus (only in Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar). Canute, Ethelred the Unready and Alfred burning cakes - but no Brutus! And of course 1066 and all that! Education can be so wasted on the young!!
|
| Patrick Van Calck Posts: 297 Joined: 28th Jun 2007 Location: Belgium | quotePosted at 09:42 on 30th June 2010 Well, you learned it now More questions about England will follow as I read about it |
| Rob Faleer Posts: 703 Joined: 10th Jun 2005 Location: USA | quotePosted at 14:37 on 30th June 2010 Patrick: I'm a medievalist and Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) is one of the mainstays of early English history/literature. This work cannot be viewed as true history and falls more into the category of national mythology, particularly his treatment of King Arthur (whomever he or they may have been--my own take on an historical Arthur is that he was the composite of three or four separate dux bellora, loosely translated as "warlords," who operated in several parts of Britain as near comtemporaries, given strong Arthurian traditions in Cornwall, Wales, northern England and Scotland). Cathy: At least Shakespeare's Brutus was based an a living and breathing person! And 1066 And All That is still one of my favorite historical parodies--I give it a read every few years to restore my sense of the absurdity of history and how easy it is to manipulate the "facts!" Hope all is well with you and especially Mike. Edited by: Rob Faleer at:30th June 2010 14:39 |
| Patrick Van Calck Posts: 297 Joined: 28th Jun 2007 Location: Belgium | quotePosted at 07:32 on 1st July 2010 Rob, we should talk more ! |
| Please login to post to this thread... |
Follow PicturesOfEngland.com on social media and help share the beauty of England....
